Revenger (12 page)

The massive shadowy figure of a man was perched halfway up the barricade. His back was turned, but something about him sent an apprehensive chill through Carver. A woman who’d been walking beside the trolley called out, ‘Curtis!’ The man stopped what he was doing, turned around and looked at her. ‘What do you want us to do with these?’ she asked.

Carver took in the leather jacket, beanie hat and rugby-player’s face. Curtis was the big man he’d encountered less than half an hour earlier in the abandoned council estate. He hadn’t spotted Carver yet. He was too busy dealing with the woman’s question. He walked over to the trolley, picked up an eleven-gallon keg as easily as if it were a pint of milk and threw it on to the barricade.

Now he spotted Carver, walked right up close and growled, ‘Thought I told you not to come here.’

Carver said nothing.

Curtis looked at him and very quietly said, ‘And now I’m telling you to get the fuck out. All right?’

Carver nodded and started walking away.

‘What was all that about?’ Schultz asked as they headed back up the road.

‘He thought he knew me. Right . . . Time to get back up to Netherton Street. We need to be out of here before this place really kicks off.’

‘Bit late for that,’ said Chrystal, pointedly.

‘So we need to get out even faster, then, don’t we?’

27

THEY HAD REACHED
the junction with Netherton Street. The Dutchman’s Head was right beside them. Someone had torn down the pub sign, which was lying on the pavement being stamped on by a rioter in construction boots. A wisp of smoke seemed to be seeping out through one of the upstairs windows. On the ground floor the windows facing the street had been broken and they heard the sound of someone inside, a man, begging for mercy.

The pitiful sound of his pleading caught Carver off-guard and he felt a stabbing pain in his guts at the unwanted memories it brought back: all the times when he had been battered and helpless, down on his knees, or bound and gagged waiting for the end to come.

‘I’m not listening to that,’ said Schultz, pulling his knife out of his belt and stepping towards the broken windows.

Schultz was as impetuous as he was courageous. He never stopped to consider the odds against him when he went into battle. Carver had always been more calculating. He was only willing to risk his neck when he knew what he was up against, had worked
out
his plan of attack, and possessed the equipment needed to do the job. None of those conditions applied now. He came up behind Schultz, swung his right arm and wrapped it tight around Schultz’s neck, gripping him in a chokehold. ‘Forget it,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing we can do.’

Carver could feel the energy coursing through Schultz’s body. He was fired-up, breathing heavily, the knuckles of his right hand white with tension around the handle of his knife. Carver readied himself. Schultz might just be so angry he’d try to fight his way out of the hold. He wouldn’t take kindly to being shown up in front of Chrystal, who was watching the two men anxiously. She’d trusted her safety to these two. The last thing she needed was them starting on each other.

‘Stop it!’ she cried out. ‘Stop fighting!’

For a second or two they stayed locked together, then Carver felt the tension ease a fraction from Schultz’s body and heard a grunt of grudging assent. He let his arm drop from the other man’s neck. They stepped apart. Neither man said a word, but when Carver turned round and walked out into Netherton Street itself Schultz and Chrystal both followed him.

And walked right into a vision of total, unrestrained anarchy.

Fires had broken out everywhere: parked cars were ablaze, and searing orange and yellow flames billowed from the scorched windows of looted shops. The rioters had trapped several cars in Netherton Street, cutting off their attempts at escape. One was slewed across the road. Its driver’s door was open and a man’s body was hanging half out of it, suspended from his safety belt. A group of kids who barely even looked in their teens were clustered around another car. An elderly woman was lying motionless on the ground beside it, but they were ignoring her completely as they squabbled amongst themselves, fighting for the right to get in and drive. Small groups of rioters were running to and fro aimlessly, looking for something to do, some new target to attack.

Carver looked up the street and saw a blue alarm light flashing outside the Lion Market. The shutters were half-down, evidently
blocked
by some obstruction, though he could not see what it was: the dozen or so people gathered outside, shouting and throwing things, were in the way. One of them made a dart for the shopfront and dived under the shutter. A few seconds later he rolled out again, clutching his head. Blood was streaming through his fingers. Carver thought of the big lad he’d seen putting out the fruit and veg. It looked like he was holding the fort. The other one, behind the counter, had been no one’s idea of a fighter.

He looked around for a means of escape and his spirits fell even further. Both ends of the road were completely blocked by garbage trucks, and both trucks had people by them. It would be next to impossible to sneak past undetected.

A car had skidded to a halt by one of the trucks. Another scrum of people was gathered round it. They’d pulled open the door and were dragging out a woman. She was long-limbed and slender as a gazelle, and about as defenceless, too, as she writhed frantically, trying to wriggle out of her attackers’ grasp and evade the punches they were raining down on her, and making futile attempts to hit or scratch them back. Some of the men around her had hunting knives or machetes in their hands, their blades glinting in the firelight.

This time Schultz didn’t give Carver the chance to stop him. He just started running towards the car.

‘Shit!’ muttered Carver. He looked at his old sergeant. It was one thing being calculating enough to stop him doing something stupid. It was quite another standing by and watching him go to his death. ‘Stay here,’ he said to Chrystal. ‘Do nothing. I’ll be back.’

And then he sprinted after Schultz, his baton in his hand, straight towards the mob and the screaming, desperate woman.

28

PAULA MIKLOSKO WASN’T
thinking any more. She was barely conscious of fear or pain. Hers were the raw, instinctive, un conscious reactions of a trapped animal, operating on nothing but survival instinct. The snarling, shouting faces around her were as much animal as human, too; as untamed and unfeeling as a pack of wolves.

Through the crowd she could see another two men rushing towards her like more scavengers running to feed on a bloodied corpse. But then they got to the pack and suddenly everything changed. She saw a knife flash and blood spurt from a severed throat, and another one of her attackers double over as a blade sliced into his gut. One of the new arrivals had what looked like a stick in his hand. It didn’t seem like much of a weapon but he was jabbing it at his targets and following up with a blur of kicks and jabbed elbows that left them doubled over in pain – and defenceless against further brutally effective slaps to their lower faces that made their heads twist round on their necks and sent them spinning to the ground.

Most of the men around her took one look at the clinical brutality being meted out and ran for it. But one stood his ground. His face was hidden behind a black balaclava and a pair of goggles with a black metal cylinder that looked like a small torch attached to them. He looked like some kind of futuristic warrior in a suit of black armour plating as he reached round to the small of his back and pulled a gun out of his waistband. He raised his arm, bringing the gun to bear on the two onrushing men. But before his arm had even straightened in front of him the knife was flashing through the air and burying itself up to its hilt in his throat. He dropped the gun and fell to the ground, dead by the time he hit the pavement.

One of the newcomers came up and took Paula in his arms. ‘You OK?’ he asked, looking into her eyes as though they might give him the answer he needed.

Paula mumbled some kind of incoherent reply. The man who was holding her said, ‘It’s all right, it’s all right,’ and it was the tone of his voice more than the words themselves that calmed her a little.

The other man, the taller and burlier of the two, was standing over the corpse. He picked up the gun that was lying nearby. He took the magazine out, checked it, replaced it and racked the slide. Then he said, ‘Piece of Chinese shit, but it might just come in handy.’

Carver heard Schultz’s voice, but in the deafening cacophony of the riot could not make out what he’d just said. He turned his head in Schultz’s direction and was about to ask, ‘What?’ when something caught his eye: something black on the side of the dead man’s head. He pointed at it and shouted, ‘What’s that?’

Schultz bent down again to take a look. ‘Video cam!’

‘Take it!’

Schultz got down on his haunches to detach the camera from the goggles. At close range he could see there was a cheap gold-plate chain round the man’s neck, just below where the knife had hit. In the middle of the chain, underneath the knife itself, was a name: Random.

‘Well, you got that right,’ Schultz said to himself.

He removed the camera and held it up so Carver could see it. ‘You want this?’

‘Yeah, thanks.’

Schultz threw the camera over to Carver, who caught it one-handed and stuffed it in a jacket pocket.

‘Now what?’ Schultz asked, stepping back to Carver and the woman, who was still visibly shaking with fear and shock.

‘We’ve got to get out of here before anyone decides to get their own back on us,’ Carver replied. He paused as a thought struck him: ‘Shit!’

‘What’s the matter?’ Schultz asked.

‘We could leave right now, just crawl under the truck and vanish . . . But Chrystal’s back up the road and we’re not going without her.’

‘Too bloody right we’re not . . . Look, she’s my bird, so I’ll go get her. You take this one, get the fuck out now and I’ll catch up with you.’

Carver shook his head. ‘No, I’m not leaving you in the middle of this. Get Chrystal. Bring her back. I’ll wait.’

Schultz didn’t argue. He sprinted back down the road. Carver looked past Schultz towards the undiminished mayhem and confusion of the riot. He heaved a sigh of relief when he spotted Chrystal. She’d done as she was told and stayed put, just moving a few metres to make herself as inconspicuous as possible in the shadow of a building. He saw her wave as she realized Schultz was coming back to her, excitedly letting him know where she was.

Carver turned back to the woman they’d rescued. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said to her. ‘We’ll have you out of here in no time.’

He was about to ask her name when he saw it would be pointless. She was glassy eyed and entirely non-responsive. Through the open door of her car he could see her handbag, sitting on the passenger seat. He pulled it out. There was a wallet inside and a driving licence in the name of Paula Miklosko.

‘There you go, Paula,’ Carver said, though in her present state it
made
no more sense than talking to a cat. Her body was as slack and lifeless as a puppet with no strings. Carver passed the bag over her limp hand and up her arm so that it was hanging from her shoulder. He looked for Schultz and Chrystal. They were walking back down the road. Schultz had his arm round Chrystal’s shoulder. She was gazing up at him. They were both concentrating on each other.

They had no idea of the crowd bearing down on them from behind. The mob was no more than thirty metres away from Schultz and Chrystal, and those at the front of it were just breaking into a run.

29

THE MEN WHO’D
fled when they rescued Paula Miklosko must have gone for reinforcements. Carver could see a couple of them among the runners bearing down on his friends. The presence of so many people around them had restored their fighting spirit and now they were bent on revenge.

There were more scurrying figures dashing down the side of the road. Carver understood at once that they were trying to outflank him, get behind the garbage truck and cut off his line of escape. Another figure caught his eye, if only because he was standing quite still at the centre of the storm: the skinny, grey-haired man who’d given them their orders in the yard at the back of the Dutchman’s Head. He was very coolly directing his forces and, Carver had to admit, doing it pretty well.

Carver shouted at Schultz, ‘Behind you!’ He sounded like a kid at a pantomime and had about as much effect.

Now the runners were twenty metres behind Schultz and Chrystal.

Carver had to move fast, but Paula Miklosko wasn’t going
anywhere
, so he hoisted her over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift, thanking his lucky stars that she was so lightly built. Then he started running towards Schultz as fast as his burden would allow, waving his free arm and shouting as he went.

Finally Schultz noticed Carver’s wild gesticulations and looked around. The first rioters were barely ten metres behind him as he shoved Chrystal away in Carver’s direction, screamed, ‘Move!’ and turned to face the mob.

The pistol appeared in Schultz’s hand. He fired three times in quick succession. The first round hit its target right in the middle of the chest, smashed through his ribcage and ploughed into his heart, dropping him immediately. The second struck another man just below the collarbone. Cranked on a chemical cocktail of speed, alcohol and adrenalin, and brandishing an axe, he barely broke stride, and Schultz had to resort to a head shot at point-blank range to finish the job. As the two shot men dropped to the ground, several of the people nearby flung themselves down, too, in fear of another shot. The rest stopped, recoiling as if hitting an invisible force field, and in the fractional pause that followed Schultz was able to sprint like hell and buy himself a bit more space and time.

He caught up with Carver and Chrystal, who were making their way across to the far side of the road, heading away from the garbage truck to a point about midway up Netherton Street.